Lucie Whitehouse - Critical Incidents

‘You said she’s not an addict; have you ever suspected she might be taking drugs at all?’ Robin asked.

‘No.’ She seemed to hesitate. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Remember, we’re not police,’ Maggie said. ‘The objective here would be to find Becca, not get her into trouble. Knowing about drugs is for us, to make sure we have the whole picture. We’re not going to go to the police about personal drug use, okay?’

‘Right. Well, maybe. I don’t know. Nothing … serious.’

In the bag at her feet, Maggie’s phone started ringing. ‘I’m sorry, Valerie.’ She took it out, looked at the screen then stood. ‘Will you excuse me a moment?’ She pointed to the hallway. ‘Hello?’ The tinny sound of a male voice on the other end that faded as she moved away.

Valerie Woodson looked at Robin, expectant, and for a moment she was thrown. What now? Her instinct – her training, so ingrained it was second nature at this point – was to get details of Rebecca’s associates, her employers, friends, exes, but how did Maggie work? Did she have to agree formally to take on the case? Did she want to? Writing down names would look like a commitment. And what about Valerie’s side of it – was there some kind of contract? A fee? What were Maggie’s terms?

She played for time. ‘How long have you lived here?’

‘Since I was born,’ Valerie said. ‘I’m the only original Brit on the street now. My parents bought the house in the Fifties, I’ve never lived anywhere else. My dad retired about the time I met Graeme and we bought it from them. They moved out to Worcestershire, bought a bungalow near Inkberrow.’

‘Nice.’ Jesus, the idea of living in one house your whole life. ‘Did you ever see any evidence of Rebecca using drugs?’

The non sequitur took Valerie aback, unsurprisingly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Sorry – I mean, have you ever seen her with them? Found them in the house?’

‘Of course not.’ Now she looked indignant. ‘I wouldn’t stand for that.’

Robin glanced back up the hall and saw Maggie open the front door, step out and pull it closed behind her.

Valerie saw, too. ‘Is it something to do with Rebecca?’

‘I don’t think so. No. The police wouldn’t know to call us about her. We’ve only just made contact with you, so …’

‘That’s true. Yes, that’s true. God.’ She put her face in her hands. ‘Sorry. It’s just … Do you have children?’

‘One. A daughter, too.’

‘So you understand.’

‘A little bit, yes. You must be … extremely worried.’ Quick, she thought, deflect the conversation. The last thing she wanted to get into was her life or how she came to be working with Maggie. Her homicide experience wouldn’t be a comfort, either. ‘Where do they go when they’re out, Becca and her friends?’

‘With her old friends, Lucy and Harry, they go – they used to go, before she started at The Spot – to this thing, what’s it called, The Digbeth Dining Club? Street food, she called it, lots of different stands that …’

The front door – Valerie’s head whipped round. Following her gaze, Robin saw Maggie step inside and close it. For a moment, turned away, she seemed to pause. Then, deliberately, she walked back to the kitchen. Her face was oddly composed, un-Maggie-like. Robin tried to meet her eye but found she couldn’t.

‘Valerie,’ Maggie said, ‘I’m sorry but we’re going to have to go. Something’s come up. I’ll ring you as soon as I can. In the next hour or so.’

The woman’s chair shrieked against the floor. ‘What’s happened? It’s Becca, isn’t it?’

‘Becca?’ Maggie seemed confused. ‘Becca – no. No. Robin, can we …?’

Robin stood, her heart starting to beat faster. What the hell? It was there, she wasn’t imagining it, the care with which Maggie said her name. Disorientated, she followed her down the narrow hallway and back outside. The door banged shut behind them. It had started drizzling again while they were inside, she’d seen it through the kitchen window, but now it was properly raining. ‘What’s going on?’

‘In the car.’

The automatic fob flashed the lights. Robin opened the door then hesitated. As she dropped into her seat, she realized she was begging: Please, not Lennie .

Maggie’s door slammed shut. She bowed her head then took a breath. ‘That was Alan Nuttall on the phone.’

Relief, followed immediately by guilt. ‘So it is Rebecca?’

‘No, it’s nothing to do with this. He was calling to see if I knew about something that came in last night.’

Last night – not Lennie. Sheer, exhilarating relief – thank god. ‘So what was it?’

‘There was a house fire in Edgbaston. They’re still looking for the husband – he’s missing. The boy’s injured, badly injured, but alive. The wife … she didn’t make it.’ Maggie reached across the gearstick and took her hand.

Robin stared at Maggie’s giant turquoise ring. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘What I’m trying to say … Rob, it’s Corinna.’

In the raw, disorientated, underground early months of Lennie’s life, Robin had used to wait for Corinna’s key in the door as if they were married. She’d start watching the clock at six, when the shop closed, and she’d imagine where she was now and now and now, picturing her tracking back towards them – the walk up to Notting Hill Gate, the number 94 bus – and then, at last, the rattle of the key, the thud as the carrier bag hit the hall floor. ‘Hello? Lennie? Where’s my favourite girl?’ Normality suddenly, as if it had blown in with Corinna when the door opened. The crushing panic, the waves of What have I done? How the hell am I going to do this? retreated, driven back by a cold bottle of Singha beer from the corner shop and the oven on for jacket potatoes.

To do that for someone. And then – at that age. Even now, years later, Robin thought about it and was amazed. An hour after she’d jumped off the bus hurtling her and the bean that was the start of Lennie towards the appointment at the Marie Stopes clinic, she’d phoned Corinna in Birmingham and by eight o’clock that evening – the first time Robin had ever ordered herself an orange juice at a pub – Rin had been in London, sitting opposite her at the sticky table, stunned but not shocked, not trying to ‘make her see sense’ as Christine had screamed later but talking about how they – they – could make it work.

Over the next few months, Corinna had uprooted her life for them. She’d been on the WHSmith management trainee scheme then and she’d arranged a transfer from the New Street branch to the one on High Street Kensington and, two weeks before Robin’s due date, she’d packed her bags and driven her Ford Fiesta down the M40 to London. She’d lived with them until Lennie was eighteen months old and she’d never once made Robin feel as if she were even doing her a favour. ‘Oh, shurrup,’ she’d said in the Yorkshire accent she put on when dodging anything serious. ‘Helping you? What makes you think I’m not using you? I’d never do this without you – I’m probably going to be in Birmingham forever after this, aren’t I, with Josh and the factory? This is my adventure.’

And sometimes, when she was there and Robin had had a four-hour stretch of uninterrupted sleep, it had felt if not like an adventure, at least not terrifying. Doable. Amid the anxiety – was Lennie getting enough milk? If she rolled in the night, would she suffocate? How was she, Robin, going to afford a child? – there were times when they’d start laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of their being in charge of a baby and not be able to stop. So many things: the way they’d had to take off their jeans to give Lennie a bath because the tub was cracked and leaked onto the floor; Psycho Mike-o from number 14 who’d asked Rin out three times a week; even the snails that came in under the back door overnight and left silvery trails over the grim nylon kitchen carpet. For a year and a half, that flat off Uxbridge Road had been their world, their tatty, semi-subterranean bunker of a world, and now no one else knew about it.